Writing Show and Episode Notes

One of the most important elements in growing your podcast listening audience and engaging with your listeners are well written show and episode notes. These not only help attract listeners, but help your current listeners have access to your information, website, and other information.

If you are not used to writing for the company, the idea of writing show and episode notes may be daunting or even seem unnecessary. But the benefits to writing them far outweighs the struggle. And, with a little guidance, you may find that it is actually not a struggle at all.

What are show notes? What are episode notes?

The show notes are a lot like the back cover of a book. This is what people will read after the title of your podcast, but before actually listening to the episodes. It should be brief but intriguing. The show notes summarize your podcast as a whole. When listeners search for your show on a podcasting app, the show notes are what they will see. The episode notes let listeners know about each individual podcast episode is about. They may read these before hand to determine if they want to listen to that podcast or they may reference them after listening to follow any links you mentioned or find out more information about your podcast.

Why write episode notes?

Episode notes boost your SEO. With Google’s new technology, podcasts are now being automatically transcribed and will appear in searches based on keywords within the show itself. Before this feature, keywords in your show notes were the only way for your podcast to appear in searches. While the Google transcription is helpful, it is still a good idea to have well written and optimized show notes. Here’s why.

Episode notes create share-worthy content. Episode notes are a great place for you to put a few killer quotes from that episode that people may want to use as a tweet, quote in a blog, or other locations. Having this type of content also allows you to repurpose that into email teasers, social media posts or blogs for your own page.

Episode notes encourage engagement. Within your notes, you can include links that draw people to your brand’s social media accounts, product page, blog, or other interesting elements of your website. Include links in which the audience can subscribe to your podcast or newsletter as well. Encourage listeners to comment on your episode notes with feedback, questions or comments. This not only helps you know how you and your company are doing, but could also provide ideas for future podcast content. Or even connect you to future guests.

How do I write episode notes?

Most people do not want to read an entire blog post worth of content before listening to your show, so it’s important to keep them impactful but brief. Definitely do not include an entire transcript in your notes. You want to give them enough of a teaser, like key points or quotes from that episode, but also leave them with enough interest so they want to listen to the entire episode.

If you outlined your content for the episode, use that outline for your episode notes as well. Include your main talking points or segments of the episode. You may also want to include an introduction or few details about any guests.

Be sure to include any links you mentioned in your episode or any links that would be helpful to listeners based off your content. This includes any sources or products you mentioned. It is important to include any information about your guests too such as their website, social media or podcast. It’s also a great place to share source material so listeners to go deeper if they like, after listening to your show.

Daniel J. Lewis says your notes need to answer the questions of “why should I listen to this?” and “what will I gain?”

Make your episode notes visually appealing and easy to read by including headings, breaks or other visual elements.

EXAMPLE:

Example of Episode notes from John Lee Dumas’ Entrepreneurs on Fire.

While it may seem time consuming and perhaps unnecessary, writing quality show and episode notes is actually a really important part of growing your podcast and expanding the audience of your business or brand.

This post was written by Auxbus, the first end-to-end audio platform designed to eliminate the obstacles that stand in the way of creating a podcast. Auxbus makes audio creation fast, easy and fun. Learn more and try it for yourself by visiting Auxbus.com